In Oymyakon Eyelashes Freeze, Temperatures Sink to -88F


-58 degrees Fahrenheit in Yakutsk, Russia. (sakhalife.ru photo via AP)
-58 degrees Fahrenheit in Yakutsk, Russia. (sakhalife.ru photo via AP)
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In Oymyakon Eyelashes Freeze, Temperatures Sink to -88F


-58 degrees Fahrenheit in Yakutsk, Russia. (sakhalife.ru photo via AP)
-58 degrees Fahrenheit in Yakutsk, Russia. (sakhalife.ru photo via AP)

In this remote outpost in Siberia, the cold is no small affair.

Eyelashes freeze, frostbite is a constant danger and cars are usually kept running even when not being used, lest their batteries die in temperatures that average minus-58 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, according to news reports.

This is Oymyakon, a settlement of some 500 people in Russia’s Yakutia region, that has earned the reputation as the coldest permanently occupied human settlement in the world.

It is not a reputation that has been won easily. Earlier this week, a cold snap sent temperatures plunging toward record lows, with reports as extreme as minus-88 degrees Fahrenheit. The village recorded an all-time low of minus-98 degrees in 2013.

Though schools in the area remain open as temperatures dip into the minus-40s, they were closed on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.

Dark 21 hours a day in the winter, the town has been an object of international curiosity as its reputation for fearsome cold and the resilient residents who withstand it year after year, has grown.

Amos Chapple, a photojournalist from New Zealand, traveled to the region in 2015 to capture the subzero way of life. The village is remote, located closer to the Arctic Circle than to the nearest major city, some 500 miles away, and Chapple described an arduous trip to get there to The Washington Post. After a seven-hour flight from Moscow, some 3,300 miles away, he took a van to a nearby gas station and then hitched a ride to the village after two days waiting in a shack and living off reindeer soup.

“After the first couple of days I was physically wrecked just from strolling around the streets for a few hours,” he said.

The harsh cold climate permeates nearly every aspect of existence for the people who live in the area.

The winter diet is mostly meat-based, sometimes eaten raw or frozen, due to the inability to grow crops in the frigid temperatures. Some regional specialties include stroganina, which is raw, long-sliced frozen fish; reindeer meat; raw, frozen horse liver, and ice cubes of horse blood with macaroni, according to news reports.

“Yakutians love the cold food, the frozen raw Arctic fish, white salmon, whitefish, frozen raw horse liver, but they are considered to be delicacies,” local Bolot Bochkarev told the Weather Channel. “In daily life, we like eating the soup with meat. The meat is a must. It helps our health much.”

Video taken during the cold snap showed a market, open for business on the snowy tundra, frozen fish standing rigidly upright in buckets and boxes, no refrigeration needed.

Customers in heavy winter clothing walked by, one with a child in tow. The narrator said it was minus-56 degrees.

“Here is the treasure,” the video’s narrator said of the whitefish used to make stroganina. He admitted he was getting a bit cold shooting the video.

“While filming the trading rows my hands froze to wild pain. And sellers stand here all day long. How do they warm themselves?” he said, according to the Siberian Times.

The village was once a stopover in the 1920s and ’30s for reindeer herders who would water their flocks at a thermal spring that didn’t freeze. Bathrooms are mostly outhouses; the ground is too frozen for pipes. According to the Weather Channel, the ground has to be warmed with a bonfire to break into, such as for digging a grave.

According to the Siberian Times, two men died after their car stalled and they had set out on foot during the cold streak. The group, a horse breeder and four friends, had gone to check on some animals near the river.

The press office for the region’s governor said that all households and businesses have central heating and backup power generators, according to the Associated Press.

After his trip, Chapple said it was not easy doing man-on-the-street interviews in a place that was so cold, as people outside rushed quickly from one warm place to another. Alcoholism is believed to be an issue in the area, Chapple told reporters. Depending on how cold the weather dips, people often trade off 20-minute shifts when doing work outside, according to news reports.

Chapple said saliva would freeze into “needles that would prick my lips.” Shooting was no easier — his camera would constantly get too cold to shoot, he said. The steam escaping his mouth would “swirl around like cigar smoke” he told Wired, so he’d have to hold his breath so it didn’t cloud the frame. He told Wired that he shot one photo without his gloves only to find his thumb partially frozen.


The Washington Post



Dubai Chocolate Sparks Pistachio Shortage amid TikTok Craze

Shop owner Ali Fakhro prepares Dubai chocolate at his Abu Khaled Sweets oriental pastry shop in Berlin's Wedding district on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
Shop owner Ali Fakhro prepares Dubai chocolate at his Abu Khaled Sweets oriental pastry shop in Berlin's Wedding district on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
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Dubai Chocolate Sparks Pistachio Shortage amid TikTok Craze

Shop owner Ali Fakhro prepares Dubai chocolate at his Abu Khaled Sweets oriental pastry shop in Berlin's Wedding district on November 14, 2024. (AFP)
Shop owner Ali Fakhro prepares Dubai chocolate at his Abu Khaled Sweets oriental pastry shop in Berlin's Wedding district on November 14, 2024. (AFP)

The meteoric rise of Dubai chocolate has triggered a global pistachio supply crunch, exacerbating a worldwide shortage of the green nut and sending its prices soaring.

The bars, a marriage of pistachio cream, shredded pastry and milk chocolate, were a modest hit after their 2021 launch by boutique Emirati chocolatier FIX — until a TikTok video turned them into a global sensation.

The clip, posted in December 2023, has amassed more than 120 million views and fueled a worldwide craze for pistachio chocolate, spawning a host of knock-offs, reported the Financial Times.

Due to the craze, Pistachio kernel prices have surged from $7.65 a pound a year ago to around $10.30 a pound now, said Giles Hacking of nut trader CG Hacking. “The pistachio world is basically tapped out at the moment,” he said, according to the Financial Times.

The chocolate does not come cheap. Lindt’s Dubai offering retails at £10 for 145 grams in the UK, more than double its other bars. But consumers are so keen that some shops are reportedly limiting how many bars each customer can buy, while Lindt and British supermarket Wm Morrison have launched pistachio cream Easter eggs.

Pistachio stocks were already dwindling after a disappointing harvest last year in the US, the nut’s leading exporter. The US crop was also higher quality than usual, leaving fewer of the cheap, shell-free kernels that are generally sold as ingredients for chocolate and other food, said Hacking.

“There wasn’t much in supply, so when Dubai chocolate comes along, and [chocolatiers] are buying up all the kernels they get their hands on that leaves the rest of the world short,” Hacking said.

Iran, the world’s second-largest producer, exported 40 percent more pistachios to the UAE in the six months to March 2025 than it did over the full 12 months before that, according to Iran’s customs office.

The shortage marks a sharp reversal from 2023 when global pistachio supply exceeded demand and caused a price drop, said Behrooz Agah, a board member at Iran’s pistachio association.

Due to that glut, “a variety of byproducts became available such as pistachio butter, oil and paste, which could be used in a wide range of pistachio-based foods,” he said. “That was around the same time Dubai Chocolate was launched and gradually went viral worldwide.”

In California, some farmers have begun switching from almonds to pistachios in recent years due largely to low almond prices, but those trees won’t start producing until next season’s harvest in September.

In the meantime, chocolatiers say they can’t produce enough of the cream-filled bars.

“It feels like it came out of nowhere, and suddenly you see it in every corner shop,” said Charles Jandreau, general manager for Prestat Group, which owns luxury UK chocolate brands.

“No one’s ready for this,” he said, describing his struggles to procure kataifi, the shredded Middle Eastern pastry used in the cream.

Chocolate lovers had already been suffering from a cocoa supply crunch, which led prices to almost triple in 2024 as extreme weather and disease hit harvests. Producers have been selling smaller bars with new recipes that scrimp on the cocoa.